Tensions ratcheting up in Northern Ireland

Spate of bombings and persistent divisions lead US envoy back to Belfast for negotiations.

US diplomat Richard Haass has been sent to Northern Ireland to help resolve its troubled past [AP]

Belfast, Northern Ireland - The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought Northern Ireland's bloody conflict to a close, but signs of division remain 15 years later.

In the capital Belfast, Catholic and Protestant communities are separated by euphemistic "peace walls", most children attend segregated schools, and major questions around the past and future remain unresolved.

A bomb exploded in Belfast's city centre last Friday night, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of Christmas revellers. The blast, for which republican dissident group Oglaigh na hEireann claimed responsibility, follows a bomb scare in the capital earlier in the week, and two separate attacks recently on Police Service of Northern Ireland officers.

There has been disquiet among some loyalists, too. A protest camp has been in place since July on north Belfast's Twaddell Avenue, after an Orange Order parade was prevented from passing through a nearby Catholic area. "Respect Our Culture," reads a large poster overlooking the encampment.

Questions of culture and identity impinge on business in Belfast City Hall, too. Unionists on the city council recently refused to take official Christmas cards. The reason: A picture of Belfast City Hall used in the festive greetings did not feature a British flag.

Discussions of the past have come to represent the failure of healing in society. The past is functioning as a symbol of how little progress has been made in society despite the progress made in politics.

- John Brewer, Queen's University Belfast

The flag has been a live issue in Northern Ireland since last December, when the Belfast city council voted to change its policy on flying the Union flag from all-year round to a select number of designated days. Loyalists responded to the flag's removal with a wave of protests that almost brought Belfast to a standstill at one stage.

New talks

In an effort to resolve the disputes about flags, parading, and the past, talks have been reconvened in Northern Ireland. Senior US diplomat Richard Haass, previously a special envoy for Northern Ireland under the presidency of George W Bush, and Harvard professor Meghan O'Sullivan are leading the talks.

Haass, who has already held three rounds of negotiations this year with the five main parties in the Northern Ireland Executive, said he hopes to reach a "meaningful agreement" before Christmas.

Haass is expected to deliver a series of recommendations to the devolved government at Stormont, which is dominated by the Irish nationalists Sinn Fein and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party. These could include a framework for dealing with the thorny issue of what happened during the Troubles and its victims on both sides of the decades-old ethno-religious conflict.

Recent months have seen a glut of revelations about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which left more than 3,000 dead and many times that number wounded. Earlier this month, the Smithwick Tribunal across the border in Dublin found evidence that Irish police colluded with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the murder of two senior Northern Ireland police officers in 1989.

Anne Cadwallader's recent book Lethal Allies detailed extensive contact between British security forces and loyalists who killed more than 120 people in Tyrone and Armagh in the 1970s. Meanwhile, the role of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams in the disappearance of Belfast housewife Jean McConville in the 1970s has been the subject of renewed attention. McConville's body was found on a beach in county Louth in 2003.

Shared vision?

Women walk past a Loyalist paramilitary mural [Reuters]

The Good Friday Agreement was a historic compromise between nationalists and unionists, but it left unresolved issues such as how to build a pluralist Northern Irish society and how to deal with the past. Fifteen years on, the violence has ended but a shared vision of the future, and the past, remains elusive.

"Discussions of the past have come to represent the failure of healing in society. The past is functioning as a symbol of how little progress has been made in society despite the progress made in politics," says John Brewer, professor of post-conflict studies at Queen's University in Belfast.

But there are signs that Northern Irish leaders are starting to think more seriously about how to address the past. Last month, Northern Ireland's attorney general, John Larkin, suggested ending any prosecutions over Troubles-related killings that took place before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Currently such cases are dealt with by the Historical Enquiries Team, which has delivered only a handful of successful convictions and is expected to cost £190m ($310m) over the next five years.

The parties at the Haass talks are considering a number of possible models for setting aside Troubles-era offences. These include: a stay on prosecutions, as suggested by Larkin; a truth commission with an amnesty broadly based on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; compelling witnesses to give evidence in exchange for immunity; and leaving witnesses open to the threat of prosecution.

Sinn Fein favours a truth commission. The Democratic Unionist Party has said it will oppose any amnesty but has softened its position on conditional immunity, which was used in attempts to obtain information on the recovery of the bodies of IRA victims buried in unmarked graves in the 1970s.

"We need to look at what [Haass is] saying by way of immunity - is that immunity for all time over those actions, or is it a limited immunity, such as we have for instance with the decommissioning legislation?" first minister Peter Robinson said recently. "I think we'll look at what the proposition is and judge it when we see the detail."

Tell the truth

Northern Irish politicians need to be more honest with Troubles' victims, says MLA John McCallister, deputy leader of the newly formed party NI21.

"We can't provide victims with justice. We are unlikely to be able to provide them with the truth," says McCallister. "What we can do is offer victims support. Instead of spending £190m ($310m) policing the past, why don't we use that for victims' services?"

Duncan Morrow, a former chairman of the Community Relations Council in Belfast, says those who committed crimes need to be included in any reconciliation process. "The fundamental issue in the past is how you resolve the dilemma of wanting to include the perpetrators in the resolution and doing justice to the victims," he says.

Morrow says he believes that while all the parties claim to want justice for victims, the wider question of political responsibility for violence during the Troubles is not being addressed. "Neither nationalism nor unionism want to have the real conversation about the political legitimacy for the killings," Morrow says. "A politically permissive environment for killing was created in this place, and that's what they don't want to touch."

There is a bit more optimism than there was ... But the proof will be in the substance, whether there is something generated that would provide a basis to go forward from here.

- Duncan Morrow, Community Relations Council in Belfast

Troublesome parades

The past is not the only issue on the table this week. Loyalist parades remain an annual source of tension, particularly during the July marching season. Many in Northern Ireland are hopeful that an agreement can be reached on parading, with the abolition of the current Parades Commission and the creation of a new parades body being the most likely outcome.

Loyalists, however, have vowed to reject any compromise, especially on the sensitive issue of flags.

"Unionism has given up enough. We don't have any more to give," Jamie Bryson, one of the leaders of the flags protests, told Al Jazeera in Belfast. "Any deal would only fan the flames of loyalist resistance."

"Would Richard Haass go to America and tell the Americans to take down the stars and stripes because it offends al-Qaeda?" Bryson asked.

Despite the obstacles in the way of a deal, there is a growing expectation that some form of agreement can be reached by Haass' self-imposed deadline of the end of this week.

"There is a bit more optimism than there was that they will do something that would allow Haass to claim some success," says Morrow. "But the proof will be in the substance, whether there is something generated that would provide a basis to go forward from here."

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